Library's price tag is rising

The Ponte Vedra branch library expansion is still in its planning stages, and yet the price tag has increased by more than half a million dollars.

Even before the lowest bid from various construction companies has been accepted, the cost of the project has risen from less than $1.2 million to more than $1.9 million.

This increase is due in part to a $250,000 donation from the Ponte Vedra Friends of the Library and the Professional Golf Association. It is also due to higher fees from the architect firm working on the project, Hunter/McKellips and Associates, and redesign recommendations from the Friends of the Library and the Ponte Vedra Architecture Review Committee.

The donation raises the costs of the county because it increases the project's size and overall budget. The architects' fee is assessed at 7.54 percent of the project's total cost. Therefore, as the budget increases, so does their fee. In this case it increased $18,000.

"The architects are entitled to some changes in their contract because they did more work,'' said Mike Rubin, director of construction services for the county.

The county agrees with that statement; however, there is a discrepancy between the county and the architects over the amount of the fee increase. The architects want their revised fee to be $163,736. The county is willing to pay $129,311. The original fee was around $92,000.

The county describes the architects' fee as follows.

- $92,000 is 7.54 percent of the original project cost.

- $18,000 due to the donation and the resulting increase in project size.

- $17,500 due to the redesign work the architects did on the recommendations of the Architecture Review Committee.

Hunter/McKellips described its fee as follows.

- $129,000 is 7.54 percent of the total project cost of $1.7 million.

- $6,000 for an ""Initial Site Investigation and Building Program Development'' study.

- $24,925 for the cost incurred from the redesign work and the recommendations of the Architecture Review Committee.

- $3,500 to hire a landscape architect on the recommendations of the Architecture Review Committee.

The architects had to have the approval of the review committee before they could complete their work. The review committee made changes to the architect's designs, affecting much of the original work.

After reviewing 27 sheets of design work from the architects, the committee made changes that affected 20 of them, Rubin said.

""The library came to us with a totally insufficient design,'' said Frank Shumer, Chairman of the Architecture Review Committee. ""It would be totally out of character with the landscape in Ponte Vedra.''

The Architecture Review Committee monitors projects in the Ponte Vedra area in order to maintain the positive qualities of the character in the community. If the committee could have met with the architects before the designs were completed, they could have worked together to achieve this goal, Shumer said.

The architects said they had no knowledge of the Architecture Review Committee when they started working. In the beginning of the project, while they were working with the community and groups such as the Friends of the Library, they did not know they needed the review committee's approval, said Roland McKellips, one of the project's architects.

"At that time, nobody knew that the Architecture Review Committee was involved at all,'' McKellips said. ""In our original contract and scope of work, it didn't include meetings with an architecture review committee.''

The committee ordered changes to various areas of the design including the roofing and the surrounding landscape. Commissioner Mary Kohnke said Hunter/McKellips is bound by their contract to do the landscape architecture themselves, and they will not receive money to hire outside help, regardless of what the review committee wants.

"I don't really care what the Architecture Review Committee wants,'' Kohnke said. "The Architecture Review Committee does not tell the county who they're going to hire to do the landscaping. We're going to do the landscaping.''

The Architecture Review Committee has made "everybody's life miserable'' with the redesigns it asked for and the resulting architects' fees, Kohnke said.

""Unfortunately, my people (in Ponte Vedra) ended up costing us another almost $18,000,'' she said.

But the review committee is actually saving money by making changes before construction begins, Shumer said. By blaming the committee, the budget responsibilities are transferred from where they need to be.

As for the $6,000 the architects wanted for the study, the commissioners said that price was included in the architect's original contract along with the responsibility to do the landscape architecture.

The contract states that the architect firm "will secure at its own expense, all necessary personnel required to perform the services under this contract.''

The architects have two choices: They can either continue working and accept the $35,000 deduction from what they wanted their fee to be, or they can hire legal council and let the courts decide what their fee should be.

However, this should not hinder the construction of the library, said Joe Vonasek, from the county's office of budget management.